June 23, 2011

I have been away from this blog for quite long, considering that most of the time spent in this interim period is in my cozy room. I guess it is due time for an update before flying to a foreign land. Those of you who know me probably have an idea of where I’m going, otherwise there should be some updates after the vacation. Perhaps I shall write about it in Chinese just so someone can brush up their skills, or give up trying.

I had just collected my graduation gown, along with it multiple bags of pretty useless stuffs and promotions for plaques and graduation photos. To be fair, most of those random scraps of papers will never find a way into my use-list. They are more appropriate to serve as wonderful bone carriers for the fantastic stuffs that I will be eating. As commencement draws near, I can’t help but reminisce about some of the issues long past.

In the past month gone, I went for group outings a couple of times (typical me), most of which are with the same concentrated bunch of cool guys. Well, we had the traditional semester-ly food hunt, which was quite disappointing this time. I’m not going to name it, but it is a western style restaurant with 3 outlets in Singapore. Portions were decent, which kind of little for us. After all, we had buy 3 get 3 free for 5 persons. I find the price quite expensive even with the promotions on hand, and it would be outrageous otherwise.

Zong helped me to get a new computer at a very good price, without the all-important graphic cards yet. Should be able to get one for better value when the need arise (read Diablo 3). But otherwise, it is very powerful right now. 8 gig ram ftw. What can I do with it now? Not much idea. Don’t really have anything to test the capability of this new monster yet. Time will tell.

Met up with another group of friends for dinner buffet at 2D1N Soju Bang, a Korean outlet serving delicious marinated meat. It is very very good for the price, $22 nett (I went on a weekday). Not sure if its more expensive during the weekends, but it might not, considering the epic queue already in place everyday. That would be one of the three bad things to point out, which we neutralized by being among the first to turn up. Second of which, despite being fabulous for meat, it didn’t have much variety otherwise. I feel fat eating too much of those. Finally, expect to smell like BBQ roast pork upon leaving. I believe we spent a good three hours there, so the smell is quite obvious. Nonetheless, do try it for yourselves if this is new to you.

What more to say? I have an interview offer now, scheduled 1 day after getting to know of it, and 1 day before flying. How great. But I shall put in my best effort now, minus a maximum of 2 proper DotA games. Here goes.

p.s. I should stop updating the movies and dramas I watched because it is pretty pointless at this stage of life.

July 19, 2010

Heya I’m back after more than 10 days. Actually this post title might be a bit misleading, but let’s get to that later. I’ve been spending my time recently between some games, 2 dramas and the usual net surfing. The World Cup has already long passed so I guess I don’t need to talk about it too much now. On account of Germany’s showing, I do hope they can scale even greater heights 4 years from now when the aspiring young players start to mature.

Right, what now. Actually I had spent quite some time on Football Manager 2010 due to the fervor brought on by the WC. I decided to pick up a puny team, Crewe, and managed to bring them to the Barclays Premier League in a couple of years. But it starts to get very irritating when all the big clubs start circling around my players like how eagles hunt for their preys. It just gets more difficult when suddenly all my best players are eager to leave for greener pastures. Boo, I shall put it away for now and stop the game. I dunno, perhaps the WC fever had died off. Argentina won Brazil 2014 in my simulation.

Went out last Saturday with my uni clique to celebrate Min Yao’s birthday, which he amazingly and alarmingly forgot about. Had some good Dim Sum at Crystal Jade. Thankfully didn’t order too much food. The girls ate super little and its up to me and Gary to save the day again. We spent a little just over $97 on the meal, for 7 person, which is a reasonable price, but again, the girls didn’t eat much. My very pathetic and lousy estimate says that we ordered over 20 笼/plates (its this long right?) of food. I like the chestnut cake lah, rocks much more than the carrot cake. But alot of ppl never eat before and didn’t try it. I do admit at first sight the colour doesn’t look too appealing. But oh well, it rocks.

Now finally, what is this post title about. Nope I don’t have any dreams to share over here. Rather is has to do with Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Erm I’m currently watching the latest adaptation, once again a China production, of this epic novel / Chinese classic. I kind of already know the entire outline of the plot, though not in as much detail as I wished. So knowing the epic feats that some epic characters will perform, its kind of the longing to embrace their heroic dreams again. Certainly I still learnt alot from this new drama, more detailed about the plot, and maybe some characters. This actually has pretty impressive war and duel scenes where people do not actually seem redundant. You know, alot of fighting scenes in subpar shows where multiple fighters engage in a battle, there are bound to be some wonderful jumping around in the background by some of the fighters while they wait for their turn to be pummeled. I always find that amusing. But so far, I don’t think I’ve seen any of this retarded act now. War is brutal, war is serious, the soldiers fight, for their lives, and honour. No stupid jumping around. And the 1-vs-many duels are always nice to see.

July 8, 2010

July is here! hahahaha. And with it comes quite a number of new stuffs for me. Lets talk about the usual stuff first. Even if you are not an avid fan, you should know that world cup fever is still on. And now that it is going into the final stages, the matches are typically more exciting, though Spain-Paraguay turns out to be pretty crap. Has enjoyed Germany the most, though Paul the Octopus gave an unnerving warning recently.

The big big thing going on from this month onwards is the restructured public transport fare scheme! Been hearing complaints, from the same group of ppl, coz these are the ones that usually talk to me online on a daily basis. Seems like generally, most of our trips become more expensive, and some by a huge percentage spike. Since it is distance based now, those of us using bus trips on the expressways, welcome aboard, we are pwned! I do believe that bus hopping is a reasonable move now for those without concessions if the buses travel along same routes, since the total fare should be the same.

There are only a few places I travel frequently to, and so far I have only spotted 1 trip to be less expensive. And that is to my university, by a mighty 1 cent! I would probably use concession during school terms, but for the sake of illustration, here is an example. My previous route would be to take a certain bus 1 stop before an interchange, and transfer to another bus opposite a certain educational institution, dropping at my school. This move would cost $1.30, and under the new scheme cost $1.33! So where is the 1 cent saving I talked about? Fret not! The power of cost reduction now lies in bus-train transfers, or train-bus transfers, whatever. So at the very start of the journey, I can replace 2 bus stops with 1 LRT stop, and then hop onto my so called first bus, and follow the same routine. That move would have cost me $1.48 previously, but now it stands just at $1.29! See where this is heading? Cross-mode transports ftw.

Now for another convincing example. Yesterday I made a visit to my friend’s home. Here’s the deal. Typically, I would have walked 2 bus stops distance to reach one that has the direct service to his home. That used to cost $1.31, now $1.29. My alternative routes now would be to take a service for 2 bus stops to that bus stop for transfer, old price $1.50, now $1.29! Practically free. The new system presents many opportunities for us to try to salvage the usually increased cost, by coming up with some perhaps weird routes that never came to our mind before, coz those might seem to be expensive. But now hopping is the way forward.

Well, as stated above, I went to my friend’s home. And that is the first time I touched a ps3. So suaku! Me and ken were getting our asses royally owned by jh in ssf4, but I did manage to rake up some wins! Good considering I never played vs games for probably a decade. We also tried GT5 prologue, and of course it wasn’t easy. Again, experience proved to be priceless as jh once again owned us. I may not be the best person to execute flawless driving moves, but generally I am much more aware of quirky shortcuts and possible tools to gain an advantage in games. Me ftw! Finally we looked at the system for ff13. As I don’t own any high end consoles, I must say the graphics and audio are pretty solid, and the battles are fast paced and nifty. Looks like something I would play if I had my own. One thing bothers me though, the Eidolons, more commonly known as Summons, put me in quite a surprise. Probably has something to do with the context of the story, which also makes it that 1 person only has 1 Eidolon… they look… weird. I think it destroys the very essence of those spiritual entities. The Eidolons become more like Transformers… Weird, just weird.

Finally, dom joined us for dinner at Din Tai Feng. Had some xiao long bao, shrimp dumplings, sliced beef, and a main for each of us, which I chose some pork ribs noodles. The food is pretty savory, but of course we are not willing to part with too much $$$, so that was it, not full. We walked around aimlessly for quite some time before going in to Mac for ice cream and some sides. The 4 of us played World Combat in zone-x for some casual fun, with only 1 credit each. Amazingly, amazingly I tell you, it played out kind of in reverse for us. Our real-life sergeant was the first guy to lose all his lives in the game. Dadah… The second guy to die is the one who barely passed his range (live shooting – rifle lah) in the army. Dadah… The next person to KO is the guy who has had serious arm injury problems, and is excused from rifle in the army. Dadah… Amazingly, amazingly I tell you, our last survivor goes to da dom, the PES E elite administrative staff in the army who has no need ever to go outfield or handle weapons. Dadah… What a surprise.

I have not watched any drama since the last update! Oh nos… better start soon after the world cup. Though, I did managed to set aside some time for movies outside of my football manager campaign. The Green Mile is exceptionally thought-provoking and well… remarkable.

June 4, 2010

All right, now time to recap on a couple of things. Remember my hope for fantastic grades? Hurhur, that was a bit premature. I could have done better with the selection of modules in the semester, but that was not to be. Oh well, I can still rest easy knowing that most people would be dying to exchange their grades with mine, though my chances of a First Class Honours is effectively dashed now (still possible mathematically but…). I shall take things as they come, and I can say I slacked my way to a Second Upper 😀

On other news, AIA is looking to employed me as their financial consultant… That is kind of unexpected. Anyway, talking with people doesn’t seem to be my forte, and I definitely don’t see myself in this career at the moment. The cash flow sounds lucrative if you have a stable recurring client base, though with the throngs of such consultants around, what are the chances?

Finally, I must remember that I ever went to Peach Garden @ Thomson Plaza on this fateful Wednesday with jh and dom. Ken would have been there if not for an epic disastrous location and timing forecast, but he gets to save some money. The restaurant is definitely quite expensive! I must admit some of the food is quite delectable and of course you see crabs, prawns, scallops etc all around the menu, but the portions were erm… how should I put it, modest. It doesn’t help that we didn’t wanna part with too much money despite our gargantuan appetite. So we moved off after that for some carrot cake, so much cheaper! If I am rich in future, I will be more welcoming of these elite restaurants. Until then…

January 31, 2010

Yesterday, I went to Le Le Pot for the second time, which is the first time with my uni clique, after much recommendation from Joi. It turns out that only the 2 of us knew about this hidden gem of a place deep in the heart of Tiong Bahru. I remembered the last time with my jc clique, we can only have 2 soup bases. Rejoice, for now we have 9 people, bringing the allowable soup base tally to a grand total of 4. We got the herbal chicken, laksa, tom yam, and chrysanthemum coconut soups. Nice! I finally got to try the 2 more exotic (in terms of steamboat) flavors.

I wouldn’t do anymore review-esque thing for this place again, but I was under the impression that their crayfish was under the unlimited menu, but is now in the extra-charge menu. Sadly, but then again my clique doesn’t seem to be big eaters of seafood, and some of them are also not exactly big eaters of meat. Cannot get value out of this! Consider this the first time some of them see me eat big time. Actually I can still eat but I will feel paiseh with 8 people waiting for me. So to preserve my fine image and blend in with the other 4 guys (who are more or less big-sized relative to me) who had stopped, I refrained from going for another round. Oh well partly because the original plan was to catch some kind of movie.

But apparently it was deemed late enough that people suggested returning home, so we did. Might as well have skipped the movies cos there are no blockbusters at this time anyway.

January 5, 2010

It was a day of waiting for me yesterday, many many different kinds of waiting. Early Late in the morning I woke up with no breakfast, which is good! But I had to wait for lunch.

Since it was a special day unlike many others, I had to flirt with CORS in order to secure my modules for the coming semester. It will prove to be a long day of waiting. I had my brunch, kept looking at the CORS screen, and felt the agony swelling as the number of bidders kept rising in my modules. I firmly believe I have enough points to get what I wanted, but the problem was my buddies getting to be in the same class, hahaha. I really really HATE doing a module alone. Unsurprisingly, that seems to have a positive correlation with me getting pathetic grades. It was gonna be a long long wait to the 5pm mark when the bidding would close for the day. And in the meantime, I conveniently psychoed some people to join the modules/sections I am going for, took a lazy nap to kill the long excruciating time, and woke up to continue bitching about the rising number of bidders.

It was all cool when 5pm eventually struck, though it forced me to up my bid points several times. I could then look forward to the next phase of waiting, as a few of us had reserved a booking at Crystal Jade La Mian Xiao Long Bao to sample their buffet. But the thing starts at around 8.15pm so it was gonna be another long wait in order to start appeasing my stomach. Well I actually thought the menu was quite decent. I would say mostly all the decent steamboats will have those kind of items, so the highlight here is the xiao long bao, of which we ordered 7 portions of, which is 35 of them. I think I only ate about 8 or something, I know Gary ate alot of it. This must be one of the better items here. But we made a mistake in the soupbase. We had the normal pork bone one, and a spicy sichuan one. The sichuan soup is really really friggin spicy. Not very much in the nice spicy way because it is quite oily to be honest, so the taste lingers in your mouth and it is also easy to choke on the spice. So whenever we ate something hot, it reignited the spicy feeling in your mouth again. It is one big reason slowing down our general eating speed. Anyway, we did order a bit too much eventually. Huixin didn’t eat alot, Susan had a slow but steady achievement and lasted all the way, while Gary aside from xiao long baos seemed content to adopt a leisurely pace. All in all, a pretty decent place, but if you come for the middle timing at night, it did seems a bit rushed. Supposedly 8.15 to 10 but we dragged till around 10.30, and they allowed us to because the last timing didn’t have alot of customers.

It is worth a mention that all throughout the eating session, I was waiting for Mr jh to sms me. The agony! When I finally reached home, which was just like around 15 minutes to midnight, I realised to a mixed feeling that jh had not accidentally fell asleep. So the question then was what happened to our module allocation result. After many bitching with different groups of people and individuals, I finally decided to wait no longer. So did many people. I only personally talked to and knew of 2 who stayed up longer. The very next day, which is today, we found out the allocation result was emailed to us at 3am+. What happened!!! Oh gosh NUS students seem to have luck out recently with all the conky systems and delays.

The good thing: I got all the modules I bid for, I’m not in any of them alone.
The bad thing: Bank Management burnt a deep hole in my point reserves.
The mixed feeling: I gave up trying for a level4000 module that ended up costing higher than banking.

And now starts the long wait for me to have my first lesson in the new Mochtar Riady building.

December 24, 2009

Oh well the content of this entry pertains to yesterday. But I was too tired to blog properly yesterday anyway. This is a routine outing (once per semester) with my jc clique of which the prime order of business is to satisfy our craving for buffet.

The location of choice this time round is the Hokaiddo Japanese Restaurant situated at Turf City. Thankfully there are half-hourly shuttle buses from Clementi for me and ken, while the rest fortunately had the free shuttle from TPY. Well, there appears to be a promotion for weekdays where a 6th person can dine for free with every 5 adults. Since our regular clique consist of a mighty strength of 5, dom brought his gf along. But she doesn’t seem too happy with the lack of desserts in this place, hohum. Good thing is free green tea that they promptly refill everytime, though other beverages will come at your own expense. Once again, the buffet style is ala-carte so we can all settle our lazy bums on the seats. Hmm I’m beginning to feel lazy to go for the normal kind of self-service buffet.

Now about the food. Sashimi servings are pretty good I guess. It is not the typical super thin slices you see in many places, so you feel it in your mouth, whoosh! I guess its one of the better things since its not too filling and not oily (duh!) which usually will make you feel sian of eating too much. Then there are also the typical sushis, handrolls and makis. Trying one of some is nice, but I don’t exactly like these because of the amount of rice. For some of the types, the ingredient used is like wth… for instance the (extremely thinly sliced) scallop sushi. There are also deep-fried food and teppan style food. I kinda like the teppan, especially the beef and fish, which appears to be the better dishes in this place. Oh yes, I would not recommend the cheese chawan mushi… The cheesy feeling felt extra and the normal chawan mushi kind of taste better. I never ate any of the rice/ramen. I guess I really cannot eat too much jap food, dunno why!

After spending more than 2.5 hours there, it is time to set off for the next phase of our outing, which is to catch a movie. With all the downright rotten reviews of The Storm Warriors floating around the net, the lot of us decided to throw $6 down the bin to see for ourselves just how crappy a movie it is. (Might I say it did not disappoint in that aspect…) Anyway, wait for a proper topic on the movie next time, which will probably appear only next year given the amount of drafts I have right now serving the purpose of dishing out during rainy busy days. Well, we walked our way out of Turf City (a good way for a little workout after buffet) to catch a ride to the city, missing 1 bus along the way. Alas we couldn’t make it for our planned show time and so dom’s gf who needed to go home by whatever time it was parted ways with us while we went for the later one at Cineleisure instead.

While waiting for the show to start, we did a lil bit of walking around, including grabbing a slurpee each. Hey I haven had one for a long time and amazingly I accidentally managed to fill it right to the brim, which is almost level with the small opening of the cap. After that we went to check out 313 @Somerset. Yes I haven’t been to there before. Not too much of a surprise given that shopping is not 1 of my hobby and the fact that most of the stuffs are targetted at female shoppers anyway.

And next is finally the movie, which raised some eyebrows. Okok yes I already mentioned to check out my rantings on it in a future entry. After the movie we walked further down to Orchard Central. It’s the second time I’m going there but I didn’t explore it the first time round to know that it has such a unique layout. As jh point out, the whole experience kind of reminds us of RPG questing. Now this building resembles a tower with multiple levels we need to explore and get to the end. We found out there was the standard lift, and a standard escalator section serving most of the floors. Up till the level before the carpark. Now that felt really strange because for the escalators linking the carpark levels, you need to exit the “escalator lobby” into the carpark and walk to another door into the other side of the “escalator lobby” that goes to another floor. Bummer?! Anyway, there are more interesting stuffs like the non-standard escalators of differing heights skipping some levels situated at different corners of the building. Two of the floor are also named The Ramp, which incidentally, has an inclined path linking them that runs a round in the building along small outlets. The rooftop view is also amazing and there are a couple of fine dining restaurants there to enjoy (though I won’t be frequenting them I suppose).

With the exploration of the building done, we went back down to ground floor just in time for a performance from Du Cirque de la Valle. It happens to be the last day of the performance so we are in with good luck haha. I must say some of it is amazing, though I can’t see some of the ground activities since the stage is too low and the people blocking the view in front are not exactly short. After the short but wonderful performance, we continued our way to PS and saw people dressed as Roman Legionnaires along the way. So it turned out that they are going to a stage performance outside PS. We didn’t bothered about this one and went for our dinner instead. Actually most of us just shared some random food and didn’t have a proper dinner, course I still feel some buffet food somewhere down inside. But then again I started to be hungry late at night when I got home.

And since it’s almost time anyway. Here’s a Merry Christmas to everyone 🙂

Disclaimer

Everything written in this blog is my and only my opinions on all sorts of stuff in my life. I do not presume them to be facts and you should not take for granted what I wrote as the undeniable truths.

No. of Lost Souls

52,671

The Mirror of Truth

Just another insignificant speck of dust amidst the universe searching for a greater purpose in life. Currently in the hunt.